30 bags in 30 days decluttering method

I volunteer in a charity shop.😀We hardly bin anything. There are people who will pay by weight for clothing, shoes, books and bric a brac. This is mostly recycled and makes a few pounds for the charity.

you have certainly set me to thinking and I am breaking my own rule about not selling some things. I think I hang onto some things because they are too good to just give away

I cannot be doing a bag a day or 30 bags but can do a now and then. I have just learnt how to upload a photo to a crafting site and have just listed a couple of really good items

The kick up the arris that I needed

Thanks for starting this thread Guesswhat. It’s good to have a gang of accomplices.

I haven’t moved mountains today, but I have made progress, which will give me momentum tomorrow. Nothing to charity today, but tomorrow’s bag will be of books I think. I’m out all day, but will try to do something in the evening.

Well done all you declutterers

I haven't started yet but I have had an offer from 2 friends who are coming next Monday to help me get started and my DC have had an ultimatum.
I've said I will have to clear the attic and they got alarmed. One DS is going to hire a van and take things he considers important in case I throw them out.

What does one do with films on cassette videos?
Old maps?
Tools?

Give them to your children?

I think you'll find that if you tell them that anything they want to keep has to go to their houses it will concentrate their minds.

Mr Dog has a garage full of tools. I have no idea what I'll do with them if they are left for me to sort out. My children are not of the DIY persuasion, so might take a screwdriver each, but as for the rest I have no idea. Do tools go out of date? He won't be persuaded to part with them, which I can understand really, as my knitting stash and paraphernalia fills a double bedroom.

I’m chortling at the thought of your DC panicking and hiring pantechnicons, Gramaretto. 🚛 🚛

Dh had zillions of tools, I have no idea when or where he acquired them. Some went to our son-in-law, who farms and others are going to a re-use scheme. Men’s Sheds may be interested in them or if all else fails, they can go into the metal recycling.

DD has just contacted me because she needs to borrow something. She did have one but threw it out during a clear out. This is what happens when you donty hang onto things and why I have such a problem with throwing anything away. They’ve just opened a new repair cafe near to me and they could have repaired a toaster I had that broke. It’s frustrating that you now have to make an appointment to go to our local tip where they have various bins so we can recycle things.

Doodledog

I've just binned two lever arch files of notes from university in 1986 . I resisted the temptation to read through them all (they were all hand written) but glanced at the exam papers, complete with notes and scribbles, and rings around the ones I (presumably) answered. I have no idea why I kept them, but they must have been in three houses, unopened.

I had some Doodledog and you could see where I had fallen asleep in the ones that didn't finish until 6 pm . Mine were handwritten and the pen had just slipped across the page. It must be three houses at least. We still have a lot of DH textbooks I use then to prop the bed head up when my hernia is playing up.

I sneaked Mr Dog's ancient Engineering tomes into the recycling bag ages ago. Don't tell him though. You never know when he might need them at a time when Google is unavailable and an unspecified emergency has arisen

I failed at the first post, am going to opt out of even a bag a day and will carry on donating as and when I come across something good that I will not need

I posted two very good items on rav, had a question about the contents of one and quickly realised that it was too nice, useful, tactile and expensive to almost give away. I deleted the whole post

I cannot see that I have much to declutter really, having been at it since 2006. Anyway, minimalism is no longer a thing

Good luck to you all, especially the ones who are just starting

Loving this thread! I'm not a hoarder but am enjoying reading all your stories. I am going to be with all those who are all the way!
Best Wished Danni x

So many excuses. Not a bin liner, just a carrier bag… really ? How will you clear a house ?
Your poor offspring when you die, you’re just leaving it all to them.
Why would anyone have piles of “stuff” in their living room?
Of necessity I’ve done the Swedish death clearance thing and know there’s precious little left to sort. (Eg some jewellery some paintings etc)

Why the negativity? People have been happy with their progress, and if someone has ’stuff’ in their living room they don’t need to explain why it’s there - the point is that they are going to get rid of it!

I don’t understand why the perceived value of something matters either. Diamonds aside, if it’s clutter, it’s worthless. It may have cost money to buy, but the value of something is in how much it is loved now, not when it was bought. If it’s in the way, taking up space that could be better used, is unwanted or surplus to requirements it isn’t valuable at all. If someone else can get use from it, or just enjoy having it, why does it matter what it cost?

Anyway, ‘onwards’ to those who are still in . I am going to declutter some craft stuff today, and hope to empty a box of books too. Some will win shelf space, but most will be going to charity for someone else to read.

Day 3 and I’m parting with some baby toys that are too young for the littlest DGS now. It’s a bit of a wrench, I must admit, but it’s better that someone else has the use of them than that they sit here just taking up space.

Though it’s quite likely that I’ll be picking up more age-appropriate toys while I’m at the charity shop.

My Bunty annuals are still in the loft, despite previous de-clutterings.

DD (47) was never bothered about them, as for GD (15), never looked at them, although I always hoped they would love them like I did. But why should they, they are of a bygone era,

However, I think they will remain in the loft, discoloured, battered spines, loose pages, but unlikely to be binned in my lifetime.

📕

I don’t appear to have clutter as I squirrel it away in drawers and cupboards but if I could get rid of 30 bags full it would be great to have some empty drawers and cupboards.
Seriously considering it for February.

DH says AC must come and take their belongings from the loft as he is unsure how much longer he will be able to climb up there.

You could perhaps sell them Calendargirl. I am ruthless about not keeping things that I don’t use or need, not only because I hate clutter but because I don’t want anyone to have the task of dealing with lots of stuff when I die. I was an only child and so is my son. I want to spare him as much pain as possible. I know people who live amongst so much clutter that they lose things, and blithely say their children will sort it out when they’ve gone. So selfish.

I'm having a slow – very slow – clear out. And anyway I don't have 30 carrier bags.

Germanshepherdsmum

You could perhaps sell them Calendargirl. I am ruthless about not keeping things that I don’t use or need, not only because I hate clutter but because I don’t want anyone to have the task of dealing with lots of stuff when I die. I was an only child and so is my son. I want to spare him as much pain as possible. I know people who live amongst so much clutter that they lose things, and blithely say their children will sort it out when they’ve gone. So selfish.

Apparently that’s negativity.

Oh. Well living in a minimalist clutter-free house where everything is in its place, I know where that place is, there isn’t an avalanche when I open a cupboard and knowing that I’m leaving as little trouble and stress to others as I can makes me happy.

I think your feeling about not leaving a 'mess' for your son that might cause him distress, gsm, is a common one. It's often mentioned on GN threads of this kind anyway.

However, I and my siblings (and some of the grandchildren) did not find sorting through our parents' clutter after they died distressing. It was the clutter of both of them because Mum had not cleared Dad's stuff even though he died twenty-six years before she did. Some of the clutter was from both sets of our grandparents too. We actually enjoyed dealing with it all. It was so memory-jogging and absolutely historical.

Perhaps this was helped by the fact that our mother's death was not sad. It happened, peacefully for her, when it needed to happen. To this day I still mind about my father's death because he was too young when he died, and he suffered serious illness. But I am glad to have had the chance to find and keep some of his keepsakes.

My parents didn’t have clutter, but dealing with their things and making decisions about them without a sibling to discuss with wasn’t easy. So I know what would face him.

I think there’s many a mile of happy medium between leaving loads of meaningless clutter for your children to sort and doing the Swedish death clean.

My grandmother was forced to get rid of just about everything when her Victorian house was compulsorily purchased and she was moved to a tiny bungalow - I used to love her “clutter” but was too young at the time to be offered any of it. My mother was a bit of a minimalist and got rid of a lot of things that I would have liked to have had (including a set of first edition Just William books bought for my father when he was a young William - her reasoning was that I’d read them, so they didn’t need to be kept).

Sorting a relative’s house isn’t necessarily all stress and trouble. My mum-in-law’s house was like a treasure trove of memories and we enjoyed finding “useless” things like her old button box (DD1 claimed it, because it brought back memories of sorting and counting them when she was little with her grandma) and her own mother’s first embroidery sampler (now on display at DD2’s). It really wasn’t that much effort either to sort the clothes into charity shop or textile recycling, and to distribute the dozens of packs of toilet paper and sugar to willing recipients.

That’s the thing though Maggie - ‘we’. Not the same at all if there is no ‘we’, I assure you.